Sultana's Dream
August 4, 2007- August 31, 2007
475 10th Ave
SAWCC (South Asian Women’s Creative Collective) is an organization dedicated to the advancement, visibility and development of emerging and established South Asian women artists. SAWCC provides a forum for South Asian women artists to profile their creative and intellectual work, and network with other South Asian women artists, educators, community workers and professionals.
As the art world celebrates the work of women artists this year, and as SAWCC commemorates their 10th anniversary, this exhibition at
Exit Art will contribute to the spectacle in SAWCC’s truly collective fashion. Sultana’s Dream, curated by
Jaishri Abichandani, Founder of SAWCC, will feature collaborative works and participatory projects that have been produced through a process of dialogue between at least two South Asian women artists – across disciplines that include: visual artists and writers, dancers, filmmakers, musicians etc. Sultana’s Dream will include the work of established South Asian women artists such as
Shahzia Sikander and
Chitra Ganesh, as well as emerging or lesser known South Asian women artists selected from an open call for submissions. Including over 30 artists of Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, Nepali, Afghan, Kuawaiti and Iranian descent, Sultana’s Dream showcases the spectrum of South Asian women’s intellectual and aesthetic perspectives.
The exhibition’s title is a reference to the classic short story “Sultana’s Dream” by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain. In the story, the typical Muslim custom of consigning women to relative seclusion is reversed; in the feminist utopia of “Sultana’s Dream” the women make fantastic advances in the public sphere while men are relegated to the private sphere. Like the story, this exhibition underscores the innate potential of women’s collective action. In Index of the Disappeared, the artists
Chitra Ganesh and
Mariam Ghani will create an installation composed of suspended neon signs and direct-applied vinyl lettering in English with Urdu, Arabic and Hindi hand-painted on the walls and aluminum signs in the style of the old countries. The words and phrases featured in this installation will be taken from the artists’ archive of official documents, ephemera and testimony that traces how censorship and data blackouts after 9/11 have created real disappearances in immigrant, dissenting, and other communities across the US. In the sound installation Lota Stories, the visitor will hear men and women who hid their use of a lota, a water vessel typically used in bathrooms in South-Asia, from their American friends, lovers and roommates. Alternately humorous and poignant, Lota Stories underscores how the pressures of assimilation can impact even the most mundane of rituals.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show| Location | | | Gallery | Exit Art | | Address | 475 10th Ave New York (Chelsea) NY, 10018 United States | | Phone | 212-966-7745 | | Fax | 212-925-2928 | | Hours | Mon-Fri 12-6, closed Sat and Sun; Fall hours: Tue-Thu 10-6, Fri 10-8, Sat 12-8 | |
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